A joint cap-and-trade auction in Quebec and California has yielded less-than-stellar results, just three weeks ahead of Ontario’s first auction and a year before the province plans to link its own system with that market.

Ontario is set to hold an auction on March 22 in its new cap-and-trade system, which limits how much pollution companies can emit.

Businesses covered under cap-and-trade will buy permits or allowances through quarterly government-run auctions or from other companies that come in under their limits.

The latest joint auction in Quebec and California, a market Ontario plans to join next year, saw just 18